|
|
Article: The fall of Kano: February 3rd 1903. (Months Past).
- Article from:
- History Today
- Article date:
- February 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 History Today Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
THE TAKING OF Kano by the West African Frontier Force signalled the end of the Fulani empire in West Africa. The Fulani people were nomadic cattle-herders and fierce horsemen, who in the early 1800s, imbued with zeal for Islam, established a fundamentalist Muslim state among the Hausas in northern Nigeria under their leader Uthman dan Fodio, Commander of the Faithful. His successors were Sultans of Sokoto, the empire's spiritual centre to the west of Kano. The empire of emirates owing obedience to the sultan was in decline by the 1880s, when the British, French and German governments began seriously to carve up the interior of West Africa between them. It took them twenty ...